


Old Lives

by SomebodySomeone



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Death, Death Comes to Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25243507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomebodySomeone/pseuds/SomebodySomeone
Summary: Gallifrey has lost the Mandate.(Death Comes to Time continuity)





	Old Lives

The Doctor, once again, walks through the ancient forests of the world that once called Gallifrey, now, once again, all but uninhabited, as the chronarchs and the Great Houses had left so long ago that their presence had eroded into the crumbled ruins of their greatest works, already being taken by nature, some space-time anomalies, and the mythology of the out-landers, who, as a culture, remember the time when approaching the homes of the chronarchs would mean death or worse ; this ensures that she will be alone in her retreat among the ruins of the greatest civilisation in the history of the universe, where she keeps the remains of every-thing that meant any-thing to her before she entered her new life. She saw that ancient tree, brown while its neighbors were silver, a tree not native to the world, planted by ΘΣ, the last one to bear her name, to mark the location of the remains of the house where ey was born, and where eir successor had laid em to rest after eir final death, when she had taken eir role and eir name. Every time before that she had come here, the graves that lay before the tree were undisturbed, the only changes being those caused by the weather patterns of the ancient world. Of course they were ; the only sentient formes that could enter were the Doctor and the wind, the wind that remembered all the chronarchs who remained on their home-world and whispered the combined knowledge of the greatest civilisation of the universe in a language known only to the insane and the ghosts of the elder races, now long dead or disappeared. How-ever, this had changed, as when she came one day, two of the three graves had been adorned with flowers, flowers that once were native to Gallifrey but no longer were ; they had either died or evolved beyond recognition, as most life on Gallifrey had after nature was once again, after ten million years of control, allowed to take its course. The Doctor knew, instantly, who had left these flowers, and that ey had more right to be on this world than she did ; the chronarchs were not dead (or, considering the status of Koschei, undead) in their entireity, one of the first of them remained, now one of the last. ΘΣ knew, how-ever, that she did not want a meeting with the one who left them behind, although she refused to admit the reason for that to her-self. She returned to the Doctor's vehicle, and left.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jon Andersen, author of Dark Paragon and Grey.


End file.
